Cryptocurrency & Blockchain
An in-depth look at Cryptocurrency & Blockchain, what they are, how they differ from existing methods, and what the advocates and critics have to say about them.
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Cover Art by Jakub Grygier:
Further Reading:
Original Paper on bitcoin:
Satoshi Nakamoto, "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System"
Charles Stross Blog Entry "Why I want Bitcoin to die in a fire"
Daneil Jeffries rebuttal, "Why Charles Stross Doesn’t Know a Thing about Bitcoin":
Abrahim Ladha’s “Hypothetical Problems concerning the Theory of Relativity on Cryptographic Currency Implementations”:
Paul Krugman's paper "Theory of Interstellar Trade":
After watching about 5 hours about blockchain and crypto currency I’m happy to have found this. It is so well explained and easily understandable. Thanks a lot 🙂
I’m pleased to see how balanced an approach you took to this topic, it is often very controversial and polarized.
@Ari Xander Happy to help 🙂
@Kameron Landyn it worked and I now got access to my account again. I am so happy:D
Thank you so much, you saved my account 😀
My idea for how to fix the communications lag problem would be to restrict transactions that occur great distances from the bank itself. For example, if you live on Earth and want to go on a vacation to Titan, you inform your Bank what you’re doing. You then tell them to transfer a certain amount of your digital currency to a bank account on Titan. This account will serve as your account while you’re on Titan. Your still-on-Earth family cannot withdraw this money while you’re away, because it’s already with you on Titan.
For interstellar distances, it would probably make sense to have a bank on the starship itself. If I want to visit my alien girlfriend on Proxima B, then what I’d do is transfer money from Earth onto the starship. Then, after the trip is over, I transfer that money to a bank on Proxima B.
Argamis (SilverComet)
That would be a very interesting plot premise, based on what Issac Arthur has established about interplanetary travel, and the three basic approaches to it; free-path travel (very slow but very cheap, good for unmanned, non-perishable goods transfers), holmann tranfers (splitting the median of travel time and fuel/consumables cost), and direct-burn approach (the fastest and most fuel-intensive). I imagine that bounty hunters in the employ of banks or other economic concerns would be well-paid enough to have ‘frigates’ or ‘corvettes’ – light, fast, well-armed ships, that would track and intercept their prey on direct-burn courses, since anyone able to afford a ship of similar capablity, or passage on it, would be unlikely to commit fraud or robbery.
Matthew Cambell Issac Arthur
This channel has put forth ideas on interstellar travel involving lasers and ‘interstellar highways’, and has also mentioned that these highways could relay information, not just passengers and cargo. That being the case, it would be possible to use these highways as ‘currency exchange pathways;’ while information would not travel from origin to destination at _c_ , it would do so at an appreciably large fraction to outpace ships travelling at 1-10% _c_ , and timestamp validation (adjusting for relativistic concerns) could happen at each station. This would allow funds to be transferred with high speed and integrity and minimize the lag of availability for individual or joint holders. This idea could evidently become more complex, but the basic notion seems sound in principle.
Matthew Cambell
I was thinking the same sort of thing; There could be a separate ‘currency’ or ‘bank’ for interplanetary or interstellar transactions, to preserve anonymity; it would involve placing designated funds in escrow or sequestration at a time based (loosely) on the time of departure, ETA, and destination, so that the funds would be transmitted after the holder had departed but arrive at the destination before the holder did, and be converted into the local cryptocurrency as an account transfer to reestablish local integrity. This approach would preserve anonymity of identity, anonymity of itinerary (partially), and integrity of both local and trans-local blockchains.
It would probably need some modifications and adaptations for scale and time dilation, i.e. all intrasolar transmissions would be timestamped in sidereal time and verified within bounds of measured vs. predicted positions of all bodies or stations that handled the transmission. That would be an interesting way to interrelate astronomy, cryptography, and banking <:)
It is interesting that this system would give a reason to each new colonized planet/star to have their own certified “bounty hunters” following the same minimum standards across the influece of this “inter-stellar banks” [since sending people from the Headquarters on Earth on ships for years to trace and trap robbers that may die or escape to other solar systems one day before the “hunters” could reach their location would make direct persecution unpractical (even if the hunters do not age much thanks to time dilation)].
I think something like that could work but it would require tracking of one’s person and probably a rule that you couldn’t withdraw more than X% of your funds from a joint account, based on how many folks were using it. Of course that would probably also involve credit ratings and insurance in the mix and maybe bounty hunters to go get the robbers.
Best line: “You’ll end up with cans of decaffeinated coffee, which is essentially worthless,”
I spit my snack over my screen in laughter. Too damn funny. And true. And the man is able to punch on through his program, without even cracking a chuckle.
@Roger Ross Mr. Arthur is an absolute legend!
I’ve truly enjoyed watching every one of your videos, and I hope you can keep producing them for a long time to come. You can take a massively complex concept and explain it in a way that almost anyone should be able to understand. Keep up the good work buddy 🙂
Thank you Mike, I appreciate that
Each of your videos holds a Matrioshka brain’s worth of inspiration for anyone starting in sci-fi world-building. Thanks!
Was it not “Citizen of the Galaxy” by Robert Heinlein?
Eric Olson – if megastructures in gaming interests you that much, buy and try out using or making mods for Stellaris – if you can harness any CGI &/ coding talent, I’m sure you could make some convincing play elements!
Also, I did read one book (besides Dune which is more about the politics of economics than the mechanics) that discusses legal and monetary issues when the focus character, after a life of slavery, then interstellar travel and tradesmanship, makes his way to Earth and finds himself the legal heir to a financial empire, but for the life of me I can’t remember the title or the author.
I am hoping to see more megastructures show up in space themed video games. Economic tech would be great to, sadly there seems to be two ways it is done. Either it’s a dystopia with central control of everything or utopia where money isn’t needed for … reasons. There are sadly few visions of the future that bother to incorporate any forward thinking economic systems that are actually viable.
I’m always glad to hear that, the original video on the channel, Megastructures, was created essentially only as a sci-fi worldbuilding guide, obviously the channel has evolved since then but I still think of it as the hub every topic revolves around.
Always love seeing new videos from you Isaac! Keep up the good work. I share your stuff as often as possible!
Thanks! Glad to know this episode lived up to standards, I was very hesitant in making it.
This is the best explanation I’ve seen of how Bitcoin works (in regards to public ledgers and mining). Love this channel.
Thanks, glad to hear it, I’m never sure how well these vids succeed in simplifying things until I get the audience reaction 🙂
Loved the video Isaac! the voting thing is a really interesting idea indeed, imagine if it was used for a distributed government, allowing everyone to vote on every issue (although clearly this would only work in a future, hyper educated society)
Yeah I suppose, I guess the only issue is it could be highly vulnerable to misinformation and particularly large ideologically minded groups
Well it doesn’t have to be everyone, just everyone who wants to, generally informed voters will and those who aren’t won’t, for a given value of informed of course.
Thank you very much for this other perspective! I most hear the same arguments for and against cryptocurrency. This one was refreshing
Another fantastic and thought provoking video. Can’t thank you enough for the places your videos send me (or my mind!). EDIT: Also great to hear you’re doing a collab vid with Joe!
Great video! Thank you for giving the topic a serious contextual view.
Honestly, regarding the second half of the video, I would hope that by the time we are a major interplanetary species, we would have done away with currency in any form we would recognize today.
Though, I like the idea of identity confirmation with blockchain – I think there will be a huge need for that in the very near future.
This is a very important issue for me to try and understand, and you have made it entertaining as well, with your line about decaffeinated coffee. Thanks for making learning fun!
One constructive criticism: It would be better to make an effort to make cryptocurrency (or anything else) more environmentally-friendly, rather than to say it’s fine because other types of currencies (or any similar things) are also bad for the environment.
One can criticize cryptocurrency, but blockchain is a black swan in my view.
Considering that Blockchain values dropped now, this aged like wine
This aged like milk.
And you were 100% right as well fwend. #LINK <3
Right? Everybody is focused on the wrong thing here…
2021: Honk…. 🙂
Great video, pretty complex topics well explained as usual, thanks.
Thanks!
I’ve been making my way through all of your videos from start to finish and I have to say,? I wasn’t looking forward to Cryptocurency…
However, you made the topic interesting and relatively easy to digest!
Thanks Dirk!
Simulating light speed lag in banking transactions and finding the effect it would have should be a simple enough process (take care to note I did not say easy). The method I’d suggest is to use a game like Eve Online that uses an actual internally consistent economy (no hand waving x amount y into existence to balance things, everything needs to be produced in game for in game from raw materiels and transported as needed) and there needs to be a large dedicated of players (tens of thousands at a minimum I reckon but more is better) running that already functional economy with information lag between locations before introducing the ability to setup a banking system. You mostly need the large number of players to have people to try and game the system so any loopholes in the system can be fixed.
“If people start trading cans of coffee around, pretty soon all that will be left is the cans of decaffeinated coffee; which is entirely worthless”
Perfect. Love it. Keep being you, Isaac!
Great episode. I actually tried thinking about interstellar economics, on several occasions and I don’t think you need your financial information to be instantaneous, it just needs to be quicker than physical travel. So every time someone comes to a new place, his account balance can be already be waiting for him. But yes, you are correct, we would have issues if we have joint accounts (did not thought about that), but it can be solved with limits and hm.. you could have information/replication hubs every light year or so…, no you could still go on a spending spree of a joint account 3ly from each other. Joint accounts might be impossible, as they would basically need to be stable Einstein-Rosen bridges linking 2 or more spacetime points. Need to think about this more. That’s why I love this channel, damn man, every time.